Today Was A Fairytale

Thursday was a lovely day, due in large part to the fact that we were free from the students (and most of our responsibilities) for the vast majority of the day. We had lecture in the morning, but then we got out of there and went to the Lasagna Factory for lunch, which had different lasagna dishes inspired by ingredients typically used in the cuisines of the different regions of Italy. I got the classic from Emilia Romagna, since we definitely needed a baseline concept for lasagna, and Jack got the Lazio, which is the region where Rome is. His had a cheese and pepper sauce based on the classic Roman dish cacio e pepe, plus bacon and potato. Mine was with ragù sauce. We also had abundant french fries with our lasagne, and Jack was delighted to be presented with Italian ketchup (albeit insufficient for his usual consumption).

We hunted down a good Italian hat for Jack, found some little fish in the water, and watched some people fishing for something much larger in the canals. They had enormous fishing poles, so Jack thinks they were trying to catch Wels catfish, which are absolutely gargantuan fish, and quite ugly. Jack's rocking the hat, isn't he??

Our next stop was the Da Vinci Museum of Science and Technology. We learned a lot about everything from steam engines and urban gas pipelines to the physics of flight and Italian space expeditions. We saw this tiny little moon rock, brought back on a US space mission and given to Italy as a sign of good international relations, as well as the little Italian flag, carried to and from the moon in 1972. Cool! We also took a picture with one of the recreations of The Last Supper in the museum. We blend right in with the disciples, don't we?

We had pizza for dinner again and enjoyed a quiet evening in before crashing hard before field trip Friday...